Developers are flying in from across the country to scrape up deals from Windsor lots being sold off after owners neglected to pay their property taxes – with some going for more than $20,000 over the minimum required bid.

At a public meeting on Tuesday, city officials announced that all four properties put up for sale had received bids.

A property on Westcott Road – with a minimum required bid around $18,300 and in a good neighbourhood on the city’s east side – scored 11 bids, with construction companies and amateur realtors hoping to try their hand at flipping the crumbling building on site.

The highest bid for that address was $38,880, well below the $89,000 property assessment conducted this year.

Robert Patyk, a real estate developer from Vancouver, said Windsor has many hidden gems that are selling far below their appraised value.

In the case of the four sold Tuesday, all the highest bids fell below the properties’ 2014 assessments.

“You can buy airplane seats for 70 per cent off. You can also buy houses for 70 per cent off,” Patyk said, adding that he posts upcoming tenders on his Facebook account to see if they attract attention from his partners in Arizona, Phoenix, Vancouver, and even Hong Kong.

The property at 585 Riverside Dr. East was put up for sale about five years ago with a derelict building on site. At that time, there were no bids.

On Tuesday, the property – now vacant after the city paid to demolish the collapsing home – was snatched up by the company 1185696 Ontario Ltd. for a bid of $50,200. The second highest bid came in at $40,000.

“I think the prices will be going up here for the next five or 10 years now,” Patyk said, adding that a few weeks ago he showed around several investors from Vancouver.

“These are people with big networks and big capital behind them, and they’re going to start coming in bigger numbers.”

The properties sold on Tuesday each had tens of thousands in back taxes owed, ranging from $18,000 to $32,000.

“We really don’t want to take properties away from people,” Janice Guthrie said. “I know people have to make hard choices out there in the community.”

Guthrie, the city’s deputy treasurer of taxation and financial projects, said staff will go through a long process of contacting owners and trying to work out payment arrangements for the back taxes owed.

She said people can have a variety of reasons for neglecting to pay their taxes: death, bankruptcy, family problems, legal issues, abandonment.

But if the owner still hasn’t come forward after four years of unpaid property taxes and a lien placed on the property, the city has the right to sell the land ownership and recoup the taxes owed.

“It’s better than it just sitting there accumulating tax arrears and not being used,” Guthrie said, adding that the city can only take the value of the unpaid taxes and price of advertising for the sale. Any additional money is sent to the courthouse, where those with a tie to the property can apply to have it returned.

For 90-year-old Bernadette Lesperance, the sale of a neighbouring property on Brock Street is good news.

She said every time the wind blows strongly, she expects a shower of shingles to land on her property from the dilapidated building next door.

The roof is caving in, vandals kick in the front door to steal copper pipes, the back fence is falling to pieces, and raccoons regularly climb in and out the chimney.

“That property really needs a heck of a lot of work to it,” Lesperance said. Her grandfather built the house at 637 Brock St. in the 1920s, along with several others on the street.

“I would love to see it torn down. It’s been an eyesore for years,” said Rosemary Desbien, Lesperance’s daughter who lives one house away from the crumbling façade.

Two properties – Brock Street and the popular Westcott Road – sold to individuals. City officials would not release the proper spelling of those names, saying that the information presented in the public meeting was “unverified.”

The last property for sale hides down a narrow laneway in a wooded area between Dominion and Cameron Boulevards, at 1845 Alexandra Ave. Rainbow Painting and Decorating Inc. submitted the lone bid for $32,000.

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